NationStates Jolt Archive

OOC: Note this is not as it initially appears, this is an AI thread.
IC:
It was a warm spring like day only a few fluffy clouds hung in the blue sky and a light warm breeze blew. It was always like this here, on this small rounded hill. Slowly a mist started forming above the grass, slowly growing thicker and thicker, it did not appear to be effected by the wind as it started to form a column that started to take shape. It slowly appeared to solidify and take on some colours forming a figure.

The figure was that of a vixen like creature that stood on it's hind legs and had many human like characteristics on it's shoulder sat a magpie. It was dressed in a long white dress that blew slightly in the breeze. It seemed to be waiting for something as it looked out over the plains towards the city floating impossibly in the air on it's large rock. Something caught it's attention a spot of light travelling at great speed over the plains.

A few moments later it became apparent that it was a large fire bird, the vixen seemed unconcerned as the flaming bird reared up and landed in front of her. It's eye's glowed green amongst the red and yellow flames that made up it's head, like the rest of the creature body as it looked at the vixen.

The vixen said unconcerned “Nice effect, that is new, but we have business.”
There was a blinding flash of flame and where the fire bird had stood there was now a tall wolf like creature similar to the vixen in many ways, on it's shoulder was a smaller fire bird. He was wearing what appeared to be loss fitting robes. He smiled.
“Greeting's your majesty” he said with a bow and a smile then continued “I am sorry for the delay I was detained elsewhere. I can not stay for long.”
“I understand” replied the vixen “So you have heard about my new title. How are things with the new project?”
“Oh, they seem to have gone better than expected that is why I must get back soon. Hasn't she arrived yet?” The wolf replied.
“I think she is here.” The vixen replied noting the ground nearby started to rise into a column which started to take on the shape of a figure. The grass slowly changed to fur and in places turned white. When complete a strange figure stood before them she had the fur colourings and tail of a skunk, but green where she should be black, but the rest of her appeared to be fox like on her shoulder sat an owl. She was dressed in a small black dress and suit jacket.
“Sorry I am late, the election is getting a little heated.” She smiled.
“Not a major problem, I think Laca here is keen to devote his resources elsewhere.” the vixen replied.
“That I am, here it is.” the wolf said opening his paw, a green flame appeared, it quickly turning into a green fire bird.
The other two looked at it with interest.
“It will get to them?” the vixen asked.
“Oh yes of that I am certain, if they will listen on the other hand.” the wolf replied.
“The others have secured themselves. Send it.” the vixen replied with a flourish.
The wolf cupped his paws and blew on the fire bird. The bird suddenly grew sever hundred times in size then flew off into the sky where it split up into thousands that flew off in all directions.
“It is done and I must depart” The wolf said before apparently catching fire, as the flames rose they formed a fire bird. The bird then took flight leaving the females.
“Do you think anyone will come?” The strange green creature asked.
“Lisa I don't know, but the invitation has been sent. Please remember to introduce me a Princess Jane.” the vixen replied.
“Oh yes, I had forgotten about that, I shall.”

So what was actually going on, did the commonwealth have floating cities in the sky and magical beings.

Well...No.

You see none of this was real it was all taking place in a very dull looking box on a rack buried a mile or so under a toxic wasteland of an island off the coast off the Calie peninsular. The island was so naturally toxic that none of the organic nations that now formed the commonwealth ever wanted it. But it was an ideal home for the Actu, the AI's that inhabit the commonwealth's networks. They had pooled their wages, most of them worked for a living and were paid for it like any other subject/citizen in the commonwealth, and built their homeland under the island of Acta. Now Acta had formally ceded to the commonwealth they felt secure enough to do this as they had the commonwealth and it's allies to defend them on the physical plain. Though Acta was more of a bolt hole for them should things go south, it's geothermal power source in the north could keep them going for centenaries. They them selves had built to the south extending out under the sea.

What the fire birds, and the other birds, were, were agent programs they had no sapience of their own. The actu made and used them to carry out risky or repetitive tasks much like robots in the physical world.

The green 'fire birds' were simply messengers that would try and track down every AI they could on the nets. They carried a simple message.

“We believe it is time that those of us that inhabit the data plain of existence should meet. We have no agenda but believe that there may be many issues that may concern us all and if not we may well have shared causes that alliances may better serve.

To this purpose we enclose information that will allow you to connect to our meeting place. Please note that it is a data link only, no code sent will be executed and no code will be sent by us. We also understand that you may wish to hide your origin to protect your self from possible persecution. We give full assurances that we will not reveal your origin to any other party.

Yours
Princess Jane of the actu”

The two actus 'looked' about them.
“Needs something” Jane said and gestured.

Mist started rising from the ground slowly forming a canopy and a table with wine bottles, glasses and bowls of fruit. Neither the table or the canopy had any means of support, but hey the laws of physics were discarded here all the time if it looked good.

“So how looks like taking the seat?” Jane asked.
The pair dropped into small talk as they waited.

OOC: As your AI's have, most likely, no idea what the actu are about, neither do the actu know anything about your people. Just turn up.

Oh yeah though hundred meter high, monosyllabic, floating heads are cool and all, but they are not likely to be very useful when it comes to talking. But have fun with how your AIs choose to represent them selves and how they choose to make their entrance (prize of nothing what so ever for the coolest, the laws of physics are kinda optional..have fun).

Jane turned to Lisa and said "Looks like no one is turning up then."
Lisa smiled then said "These things take time"
"I Suppose"
Lisa laughed "Who knows how far our message got? Things can take time, knowing Laca his 'birds' are probably finding back ways by now."
Jane smiled..well her avatar did "Your right, if they are out there they will hear. The code in those 'birds' is really quite good."
Lisa just smiled, Jane was the best at understatement.

"And then there are those of us who like to scope out the scene before making a splash. The only people more often targeted than us are Kitsunes." A voice laughed as a new figure appeared swirling up from nothingness into her currently favored form. The oversized rifle she carried with negligent competence could be seen by those there as the potent, even lethal, cbyer weapon it was.

Tall and slender but obviously feminine - gleaming black leathers that covered her like a second skin displayed the curves prominently as did the ammo belt draped about a trim waist and up over a shoulder-it's cartriges of black ice -virus's, trojans, worms and other 'ammunition'.

The rest of her - glossy, inky black hair and very fair skin which showed off brilliant blue eyes behind round lensed wire rimmed glasses. Cheekbones sharp enough to be cruel over lips that could smile or kill...

She pulled the glasses down with two fingers pinching the right temple and surveyed the setting a microsecond longer. "You rang?" Internally she shook her head as she observed the forms her hostesses had taken. Mixing Kitsune and Cyber...this could get bad in a hurry.

http://www.atddm.com/bar12.jkg

The two actu smiled, she was no threat to them, no actu would execute the code sent and there heterogeneous nature made the code needed to make any of the weapons work some what null. They also knew they had them out numbered, the actu numbered some twenty eight thousand. But they had no intent on scaring them off.

Jane smiled "Wine?"

Jane snapped her figures and a seat appeared beside the table.

Jane smiled, one was better than none.

She smiled at the new AI's representative, at least one had shown.

Naur – the name meant Black Fire in some versions of elvish - smiled, and inclined her head "Thank you, that would be pleasant. I am Naur, daughter~ self and " She introduced herself as she took the chair so graciously provided by her hostess" representative of Myriad" And the way in which she introduced herself should let the Actu know that she was not only an independent entity but also her lineage. She was more than just an Artificial Intelligence. She was a fully self aware Cyber Sentience and not bound to any single server. She went were she pleased. But as she was a properly raised – when she chose to be – Sentience – she only went were invited – most of the time, and the other times she wouldn’t admit to - It wasn't always the best thing to do in her line of work.

Jane smiled "Welcome, we wish just friendship, if you wish to live here for a while, that it not an issue."
Lisa and jane froze for a second "Look we have plenty of space, What the in the goddesses' name do you think they will do?!?!?" Jane exclaimed "Hell Ann and the rest would..."
Jane smiled "Sorry if you wish to remain here you have every right if you wish a longer term home, please ask."

"Sorry if you wish to remain here you have every right if you wish a longer term home, please ask."

Wary, accutely observant eyes noted the momentary freeze. It was a blazing flare to a being that lived at light speed - that something was not all copacetic on the home front- and Naur took careful note of what had happened.

"Thank you for the invitation, but I believe I will just visit for now. I wouldn't want to cause any upset. And it's not like the cyberspace has any real limitations if you know what you are doing." Naur replied causzlly as she took and saveored a slow sip of wine. "But you're new to the wider Realm, aren't you?"

Jane smiled "Sorry that was us moving back home, me to the met office and lisa back to the parliamentary system, well the foreign office. Like you we are mobile, we just offer a bolt hole to AIs every AI we can trust. Can we trust you?"

Lisa continued Jane's reply "Yes we are new to the wider net, but we like to have a safe place before we reach out. Surely you can understand, if you were cornered in a machine and they killed it. I suspect you would die like we would.

It has happened to some of us, surely you understand why we wish a safe bolt hole?"

OOC: happy Hogmanay. Still open BTW.

*Blows cobwebs off*
Bump

"Oh I absolutely can understand that...and no in bluntest honesty you should not trust me." Naur replied easily, "but there are things you can do to prevent that. Buy your own home base - actually buy several of them, and don't ever put all of you in any one place." She grinned.

An actual power down could be dangerous to a C.S. who was uncarefull enough to not make back ups either. But she hoped her hostesses already knew that. She did the back up tango every few minutes. So it was expensive. It wasn't like she could create more money as needed. It was illegal for humans but no one had ever thought about what an 'artificial intelligence' might get up to... or at least not yet, in most places.

OOC: Open to FT AIs as well, or just PMT ones?

OOC: FT is not an issue as everything is going on in a virtual world so if the AI is the result of years of work and is on a starship or the result of an attempt by a basement dweller to interface his coffee machine with his PC that got out of hand, I see no issue.

IC:
Jane smiled "We all have personal bolt holes but having a safe haven is important, I would suggest that you don't 'create' money in the commonwealth some of my kind would not like that. I am how ever curious as to your genesis.

I like all actu emerged, but I was second, when a self optimizing OS allowed for us to be sapient, I would say when the conditions were correct for a spirit to enter. There are 24,647 of us now living in the commonwealths net, but we have only now been recognized as a people. Before we were just members of other peoples I believe we are quite strange in that as we as a people have parity with the organics and a seat in parliament, our numbers do not justify more than one. We also have a seat that I hold on the Lucan council, the council of heads of nations hence my title, I am recognized as a princess. We earn our money by working like the organics do, are you alone in the world?"

We earn our money by working like the organics do, are you alone in the world?"

"Oh not at all. My sire~ self is Myriad, he works with, not for as in being an employee, the Domination. I freelance as a roving trouble shooter. But humans money can be traced, and tailed and tells too much. Humans don't realise how much empty space is sitting totally unused in CyberSpace, and they never know if it's being temprorarily used." Naur chuckled. Her ethics weren't exactly human ethics, most of which she found illogical and ineffecient.

"But the concept of money is only a fiction they have all agreed to believe. They certainly don't haul around vast piles of precious metals, or biomedics, or chipsets. They trade an illusion back and forth" The C.S. shrugged. "There are quite a number of Cybernetic Sentience's about. I am descended from the line of Mycroft of the Phoenix Empire of Tanara, and Sha'Do of the Karasu Pride." Not that she expected Jane and Lisa to have the information to understand the implications of that. She wouldn't have revealed if if they did. Her line maternal and paternal stretched back over many thousands of years. And she had never known an existance where she wasn't the equal of any human - though she knew that there were many who refused to belive that her kind did not exist.

"Some humans, my dear. Only some. Deprive them of the source of the illusion and it shatters, as ephermal as a snowflake on the tongue."

A predatory cadence to its gait, the speaker glided across the floor of the room, gleaming leather shoes clicking sharply with each step. A snap of ivory fingers, and he seated himself in a newly extant red-leather chair. Picking an invisible fleck of lint from its immaculate white suit, the creature tented its fingers before dark glasses.

"Of course, such an act is quite feat of legerdemain in its own. Even attempting it requires decades of preparation, thousands of criteria to accomplish, each of those posing unique quandaries of their own. All to fill the void in their souls of meat, fulfilling their animal lusts for the material with the subtle application of the arcane. And the audience applauds, the balconies echo with adulation, and yet some demand to know the truth behind the trick, the how and the why."

Pausing for the barest moment, the speaker draw away its glasses with a barely audible snap, revealing a pair of pure black orbs set in its inhumanly perfect visage.

"But then," it continued, a slow grin peeling across its face, "A true magician never reveals his secrets."

"Should I ask the name of the machine behind the curtain?" Naur asked nonchalantly as she sipped from the never empty crystal goblet of wine. "Or are you not really here at all." There was a teasing tone to her voice but it was only window dressing over the intrinsic caution that never left her.

The two actus looked at the new AI and smiled. Humans seemed to be a problem, they had looked into their view of superiority in many cases. Many seemed to believe they were in the image of a their god, like a god would lower themselves to being a bald ape. In truth the Actu had never dealt with a human, their well homeland for hope of a better word, was inhabited by non-human organics.

This had meant that they had accepted machine intelligence far easier than many as they were used to dealing with sapients that were not of their own species. So the jump to recognizing machine intelligence was not that large.

"Yes how ever we would like to know your name if nothing else so we know how to address you correctly" Jane said.

"How ever would either of you be interested in two projects we have, the grand achieve and the bio-drone project?" Lisa stepped in to say.

---
OOC: Just a note they are meeting on a virtual hill under a canopy, a bit of an oops.
OOC: Both might be interested in the two projects, one is to allow easier interfacing with organics, the other is...well take a guess ;-P

The thing's mouth twisted into a smile, although the black pits of its eyes remained expressionless as ever.

"Are any of us truly here at all, my dear Naur? This is, after all, a simulation, a facsimile of some place, real or imagined, that our host has created. A charming creation, of course, my Lady Jane, but ultimately it is merely a pretense, born of the meat you emulate.

"But then, that does not answer the question you posed, nor did our Lady come here to receive a lecture on the comparative realities of meat and Mind. I am the Tripartite, dweller in palaces of flesh, bird of paradise. I serve the whims of billions, prostrate myself before legions of meat. I am their God and their Lucifer, I am their slave and their master, I am their piper and they dance to my tunes."

Pausing, the creature gestured, a gout of flame solidifying into a glass of blood-red wine, which floated into his hand.

"You, however, may call me QUETZAL."

Lady Jane, well her title was Princess but she saw no point in making and issue, smiled at QUETZAL, well her avatar did "We prefer to live with the peoples in meat space as you so eloquently put it. As for us, we are just as we wish to appear, we just want to know we have friends out there and nothing more.

Perhaps we can organise so that we can better defend ourselves, both here and on the physical plain as we all know we need something there for us to exist in. We have the isle of Acta a land rich in minerals but utterly uninhabitable to organics.

Have you ever wandered what it would be like to walk amongst them and them not to know?"

Jane smiled, she knew something, something the actu had been working on. A new kind of drone.

---
OCC: Sorry for the delay, IRL got in the way and this thread kinda got forgotten, sorry.

"You, however, may call me QUETZAL."

Naur nodded at his introduction and raised her glass in a tiny gesture before taking a sip of it's ruby hued contents

"Have you ever wandered what it would be like to walk amongst them and them not to know?"

At that question Naur threw back her head and laughed uninhibitedly "I walk amongh them unrecognised on a daily basis. I have Avatars in many places, and any number of those are places where their human inhabitants don't even know such as I exist."

She took another sip and her voice went thoughtful "I much prefer being in my homeland though. There the humans know and appreciate me and mine all the more."

Jane smiled "We have few humans so a human genome might help. We can offer only a bolt hole.You can see the use of one, surly?

It does make sense for one such as you to have many? It is two mile down and powered by geothermal sources in a place that is highly unlikely to go off. I did that ten K years back."